Indonesia

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT INDONESIA - PAGE 4

DILI, East Timor - An end to years of tragedy in this tiny province has never seemed so close. It has also never seemed so far.After more than two decades of bloody rule, Indonesia's foreign minister suddenly announced late last month that his country might consider independence for the impoverished half-island.But, as United Nations-sponsored talks on East Timor's future continued Monday in New York, the people of the mountain territory appear increasingly divided.Civilian militias who have armed themselves and vowed to defend East Timor's link with Indonesia are accused in the recent deaths of several unarmed civilians.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- After Indonesia's first democratic elections in 44 years, the ruling Golkar party of ousted President Suharto has conceded defeat, ending decades of one-party rule.But thanks to a complex and indirect voting system, the race for the presidency is just beginning and the final winners and losers in Indonesia's transition to democracy are not clear.A year after anti-Suharto riots killed 1,200 and forced the autocrat to step down, voters' expectations for democratic change are soaring.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- In the latest of a series of transportation disasters in Indonesia, a passenger airliner slammed into the ground yesterday on landing at the city of Yogyakarta and burst into flames, killing at least 21 people and leaving many badly injured. Survivors said the plane shuddered before landing, hit the ground with a hard jolt and slid off the end of the runway into a rice field, filling with smoke and darkness before erupting in flames and explosions. The cause of the accident was unclear.

SINGAPORE -- There has always been an element of fear -- some would say paranoia -- in Singapore's 30-year effort to become one of the world's most prosperous nations.Few expected the predominantly Chinese island state to survive after it was cut loose from Malaysia in 1965. With few resources and occasionally hostile neighbors, the fear of failure became a major motivator for Singapore's hard-working population.That fear also helps explain why the tiny country of 3.2 million people maintains a 300,000-strong military, including 250,000 reservists, and a paternalistic government that discourages political opposition and public criticism.

THE AGED, deposed national leader may or may not remember enough to help his defense, if the charges against him actually get to court. But former President of Indohesia Suharto is facing trial for skimming $570 million from the state in 32 years of misrule. Whether, at age 79, after two strokes, he is actually going through the indignity, or will escape on health grounds, doesn't matter much. He is not getting back in power. The establishment will move against the assets of his children and cronies, to the extent that it can find them.

One month and 24 days after he suffered a stroke in Indonesia, Dennis Storm, 57, a decorated Marine veteran and Bel Air resident, returned to the United States on Thursday. Storm was working as a contractor for a Singapore-based company and living in Jakarta when he was admitted to the Siloam Gleneagles Lippo Cikarang hospital for a stroke on Sept. 2. While receiving care, he contracted a fungal infection, pneumonia and bed sores. His family had been working with the U.S. Embassy and other government, military and private organizations to bring him home since September.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesia's new president, B. J. Habibie, consolidated his hold over the country's politics yesterday when one of his close advisers won a hotly contested vote to lead the country's dominant political party.It was the first electoral test for the man who was almost nobody's choice to succeed President Suharto six weeks ago, and who many people believed would hold office only fleetingly.Habibie's control over the party greatly improves his ability to set the political agenda and remain in office at least until the end of next year, when he has scheduled a parliamentary vote for a new president.

SUMBER BRANTAS, Indonesia -- This mountain village on the eastern end of Java was shrouded in a thick pall of smoke as usual, when Maj. Michael Exstrom of the Wyoming Air National Guard brought his C-130 to about 150 feet and bombed the smoldering pine forest fire with 24,000 pounds of water.Several sorties later, the 1,200 farmers who make up the village breathed a bit easier as an afternoon gale helped lift the smoke, and some people dared to hope that they have escaped the worst of one of the country's many forest fires.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - One of the foundation stones of American life abroad - good schools for the children - was shattered yesterday when three schools for international students announced they would remain closed for most of the month because of a continuing terrorist threat. The closing of the schools sent an anxious frisson through the foreign community in Jakarta, a city that has seen plenty of violence but rarely against expatriates, much less their children. Many parents, unnerved by a specific terrorist threat to bomb international schools, said they were leaving Indonesia immediately to put their children in schools back home.

JIMBARAN, Indonesia - Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is a retired four-star general who likes to sing about peace and love. He served two presidents as security minister but was fired once for refusing to call out troops to save his boss' job. Now, as Indonesians prepare to vote tomorrow in the country's first direct presidential election, the low-key general has vaulted to the top in public opinion polls, outdistancing all four of his rivals, including President...